TODAY The Hinckley Times can reveal that our brave fire crews deal with more call outs, house fires and road accidents than the station that a quarter of them could be forced to move to.

LAST week The Hinckley Times launched its SOS campaign to fight plans to move eight firefighters from Hinckley to Melton Mowbray.

The proposals have been put forward by Leicestershire Fire and Rescue which is asking people to make their views known during the consultation period which continues until October 31.

If the plans are approved, the Hinckley station could lose almost a quarter of its crew.

TODAY we can reveal that our brave fire crews deal with more call outs, house fires and road accidents than the station that a quarter of them could be forced to move to.

The consultation document, issued by Leicestershire Fire and Rescue, states how many times the Melton Mowbray crew are sent out to deal with incidents.

But those details are absent from the section on Hinckley’s fire coverage.

The document states that crews at Melton deal with 469 calls, 17 house fires and 17 road accidents but Hinckley’s team deals with 560 calls, 33 house fires and 59 road accidents.

Both stations are discussed on the same page – Hinckley’s station meriting 79 words and Melton Mowbray having more than twice as many.

Discussing the proposals that are being consulted on, Dave Glenis, an area manager with Leicestershire Fire and Rescue, said: “We are really comfortable with them, but they remain just proposals at this stage.

“We are going out to the public and to businesses to say what do you think? We’ve all been in this business a long time and we are convinced that this is the right thing to do.

“We are just moving our resources to an area where we feel we are a little bit short.

“If you look at Melton Mowbray it is extremely isolated, but it is also a town that authorities are keen to develop and encourage people and businesses to.”

According to the 2001 census 47,866 people live in the borough of Melton.

The borough of Hinckley and Bosworth is home to 100,141 people.

Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council is already well into its local development process and could propose building more than 10,000 homes, potentially adding thousands to the local population.

Melton Borough Council is well behind Hinckley in the same process and as yet no figures for new homes have been released.